Wandering Monster Card
by stargazercmc
Summary: Apocafic. Cassie flirts with the monsters in the dark.


**Disclaimer: **Not mine.  
**Notes:** This is the second prompt I grabbed for the apocalypse-kree ficathon. Thanks to annerbhp and triciabyrne1978 for the quick beta.

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I thought of my mother today.

My real mom. Or rather, my biological mom. Whatever. Not Janet Frasier, who was my mother in everything but genetics before she died doing what she loved to do.

Anyway, I saw this woman in the alleyway, hidden and scared and huddling back behind some dumpster hoping they wouldn't find her. She was thin, her eyes sunken and her face hollow with fear and grief and filth from living on the street. My real mom looked like that as she moved into the final stages of… whatever it was that killed them all.

I moved on. I didn't know how to help the woman. Besides, helping someone these days can get you rounded up. And the last thing you want to be is rounded up.

Sam was rounded up. So was Daniel. I don't know about Jack or Teal'c.

I've been living in the outskirts of the Springs for the better part of six months. There's a small colony of people there. Well, colony is a stretch – it's more like people banded together for mutual protection. Otherwise, we don't have much to do with one another.

Occasionally, you'll see one with a kid. The kids don't know what's going on and why they have to stay so quiet when they play. It's pitiful to see them look at each other and not really be able to hang out. They all have sad eyes, just like that puppy Jack bought me when I was their age.

I had that damned thing for so long. Jack loved Zoidberg. So did I, but I loved him more like a baby with her stuffed teddy bear or something. Jack was the one who would come over and train him. Sometimes I would see Jack staring at me while I played with him and I knew he was thinking of his own kid. The one no one ever asks him about.

Living in the woods isn't too bad. It reminds me of Mom and all those camping trips she used to drag me on in the fall just before the weather would get too cold. We'd be sitting around a fire and she would tell me stories about her parents and how they would go on trips to cheesy amusement parks and run-down lighthouses on rocky beaches each year on summer vacation.

I always told her I preferred our trips. And I did. They reminded me of home, and I would sit back and listen to the fire crackle and remember festival time and how my parents would dance with each other.

During the day, Mom and I would hike through the woods and she would teach me survival skills. We always roughed it on our trips, except for the tent. She would talk about how they went through training in case they were offworld someplace where there wasn't good shelter, and she taught me about healing herbs and berries and bark and cardinal directions. She loved being outside around nature. I know she wanted me to appreciate it, too. I paid attention not only because I loved her, but also because part of me was afraid one day she would tell me, "Just kidding," and toss me back through the gate and into some isolated hell.

You know how some people seem to have premonitions of their future? How they can just tell something is going to happen to them, like people who don't take the plane the day it crashes or people who never play lottery numbers that buy a ticket on pure whim and win big? I like to think that Mom was teaching me how to take care of myself.

I'm glad she isn't here to see this. I wish I wasn't.

Things are getting tougher. They circle the spotlights around the edge of the woods at night. I try not to panic, but our numbers are dwindling. Some people have just surrendered themselves over because the fear of not knowing seems so much harder than what might be on the other side of the fences in the center of town. It makes me think of Mom's lighthouses – it would be so easy to convince myself that the lights are meant to bring people to shelter.

I wonder how long before the woman I saw in the alley will be me. How long before my skin will turn sallow and I'll look like a monster wandering through a child's closet and stumbling into the open? How long before I run out of berries to catalog as the good kind before I go looking for the round-up crew?

How long before they realize that I'm the curse, the girl who brings plague, and they come looking for me?

I hear Mom's voice in my head telling me to lay low. _Survive_, she says, and because I love her, I'm trying. For now, I'll hide under the bed and stay out of sight.

But if Jack ever turns on the bedroom light, I'm so out of here.


End file.
